Dr. Stephen Del Marco: Alive at a future time (2513 AD) which is yet in the novel's distant past, Del Marco is the discoverer of TMA-0 in Africa: an earthbound monolith matching the lunar monolith which had been discovered hundreds of years earlier, in 2001.

This book could have been good. The story is reasonably interesting and the idea that Frank Poole might be woken up from his deep freeze offers some interesting plot possibilities. The only bad thing i found was the mid-book exit of a character named 'Dim.' He just vanishes and his fate is only mentioned in passing. This was my experience in 1977, nine years after the film’s release, and I had already seen both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which were special effects wonders in comparison. There was just this weird feeling that something happened. The 11 year old that I used to be had just had the second of only two real theophanies I would ever have…the first one occurred when I was six years old. The show also explores the mysteries of the monoliths, which were introduced in the earlier novels. The monoliths are revealed to be the work of an ancient alien race, and their purpose and function are explored throughout the series. The main character of the show is Frank Poole, a former astronaut who was killed in the first book of the series. He is revived in the year 3001 and finds himself in a world that is vastly different from the one he remembers. Poole is a curious and adventurous character who is eager to explore the galaxy and discover new life forms.

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The story takes place in (duh) the year 3001. Frank Poole's corpse, after bobbing around space for a millenium, gets discovered, defrosted, and woken up. Too bad for Frank, 'cause the world of "3001" is hokey, derivative, and ever so lame. For example, the decorative plants of 3001 are tended by intelligent(ish) gorillas and dinosaurs with computers attached to their heads (my question: where are the sharks with friggin' laser beams attached to their heads??).

He gets used to living 1000 in the future, and the author gets to hold forth on what's wrong with humanity in the second millinium. Hearing the conclusion to the 2001 series....sort of. It definitely leaves the door wide open for the eventual confrontation with the makers of the monoliths in the year 4001 give or take a century or two. That could potentially be much more interesting than the events in 3001.The Final Odyssey brings Arthur C. Clarke's famed series to a merciful end, closing out what was perhaps a misguided effort from the beginning, or at least from 14 years after the first book, when a sequel was written. After reading the ending of the Rendezvous with Rama series I was expecting Clarke to pretty much end things the same way, on a magnanimous upnote. With 2001 we learn that there is a vastly superior alien intelligence that has intervened in the natural evolution of apes to accelerate a group of them toward sentience. They use the monolith as their all-purpose tool to carry out the upgrades, then they leave one under the dirt on the moon so that some day, millions of years later, the creatures they engineered will find it and give the makers a status update. In 2001 we find it, uncover it, and activate it, and it sends off its data. In 2010 we discover that the monolith, operating independently from its makers, has started the process anew for some creatures evolving on Europa. Artificial intelligence: The show highlights the dangers and benefits of advanced AI, and explores the implications of creating machines that are smarter than humans. Recordemos: Bowman, tras no poder rescatar a Poole, se enfrenta a HAL y es capaz de desactivarlo y recuperar el control de la Discovery. Luego se acerca con una cápsula espacial hacia el gran Monolito que han descubierto en la órbita de Júpiter....y desaparece. Parece que pasa a formar parte del plan de los entes superiores que fabricaron los Monolitos. En las entregas posteriores aparece puntualmente para ayudar de una u otra forma a los humanos. Incluso llega a formar una entidad mixta fusionada con HAL (Halman), tras el abandono definitivo de la Discovery en la segunda entrega.

So much for the hokey and the lame; on to the derivative. No kidding, a significant portion of "3001" appears to have been lifted directly from the film "Independence Day." In the book's epilogue, Clarke himself vehemently denies ever seeing or knowing anything about "Independence Day," but I call b------t. Either way, I'm not sure which is worse, a respected author ripping off ideas from one of "The Fresh Prince's" movies or coming up with those inane, B-movie ideas on his own. Faster-Than-Light Travel: In the first book, it's shown that one of the monolith's functions is to work as a stargate. Bowman also learns how to travel faster than light on his own after being transformed by the monolith, despite knowing it's supposed to be impossible. Later books drop this.

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Nine years after the Discovery's mission to Jupiter (changed from Saturn to match the film), a joint Soviet-American crew including Dr. Floyd is heading for the mighty gas-planet to find out what happened to the Discovery and its crew. Meanwhile David Bowman, now reborn as an Energy Being, is helping the race that created the Monoliths with scouting Jupiter and its moons for primitive lifeforms, hopefully finding one that has the potential to develop sentience. It appears that the monolith in this book cannot communicate faster than the speed of light, either! Written very vividly, it actually puts the reader in the middle of the situations describing almost everything that is necessary. Some parts of the text were edited repeats from Book 1 and 2. However, I felt they were interesting to read again. Poole discovers a world of human minds interfacing directly with computers, genetically engineered dinosaur servants, and massive space elevators built around the equator. He also discovers an impending threat to humanity lurking within the enigmatic monoliths. To fight it, Poole must join forces with Bowman and HAL, now fused into one corporeal consciousness—and the only being with the power to thwart the monoliths’ mysterious creators.